


From the Other Side of Time

by plumtrees



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Married Couple, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 21:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10625838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumtrees/pseuds/plumtrees
Summary: He was only thirteen when he left this place, but already the faded street signs brighten anew, his memories filling in the gaps of stripped paint. The low-hanging mist of the city greets him like a parent waiting on its prodigal son.Welcome home.it says.Takahiro holds out his hand from the safety of his umbrella, reaches into the cold and collects it on the palm of his hand, but does not respond.Takahiro travels back to his childhood home to bury old demons.





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for the MatsuHana fanzine! Which you should all check out here: https://t.co/Ou0j8b3fyr

It rains in Ohtawara tonight.

He was only thirteen when he left this place, but already the faded street signs brighten anew, his memories filling in the gaps of stripped paint. The low-hanging mist of the city greets him like a parent waiting on its prodigal son. _Welcome home._ it says.

Takahiro holds out his hand from the safety of his umbrella, reaches into the cold and collects it on the palm of his hand, but does not respond.

 

 

-

 

 

His first step into his childhood home stirs up the stagnant air. His umbrella drips water steadily on the stone of the foyer. There’s nowhere to put it, so he just lets it clatter to the ground. The wood groans at having to bear the weight of a person when it hasn’t done so in so long. It rings across the silence. A warning.

“We don’t have to do this today…” Issei says, somewhere behind him. Takahiro shakes his head.

“Sorry I dragged you out to come here with me.” he replies, angling his head back to view Issei’s silhouette in the darkness. He doesn’t bother trying the lights. “You didn’t have to.”

Issei rolls his eyes, that quick, annoying little gesture he does when he thinks Takahiro’s being stupid.

“Idiot. Of course I do.”

Issei’s tone is as fond as his smile, and he steps forward to gently press a hand over the small of his back, guidance and support he was too stubborn to admit he needed.

“Whenever you’re ready.” Issei whispers, not pushing. Never pushing. Just silent and steady and supportive, as he always has been all these years.

Takahiro reaches to cover Issei’s hand, the matching rings on their fingers greeting each other with a soft _clack_.

He takes a breath, and steps forward.

 

 

-

 

 

His grandmother had been the only good thing in this house.

Her hugs had been the only kind he’d known, as a child. Every night he’d been lulled by the feel of her fingers combing through his hair. Sometimes she sang, but most of the time the songs that accompanied him into his dreams echoed from the phonograph in the corner.

She loved that thing. Her withered hand clutched the crank and turned it, turned it, turned it, until the machine came to life. She lifted the tonearm, dropped the needle and waited until the hissing and screeching finally gave way to hollowed music.

Takahiro could never comprehend it then, why she’d always play up until late into the night, even when he had school the next day. He had yet to learn that it was just to cover up the sounds of screaming, of things shattering as they fell to the floor, of their home crumbling from its foundations like it was built on loose sand.

(She’d kept it hidden for as long as she could, up until the day his mother walked out of the house for the last time, Ryuichi Sakamoto playing in the background.)

He opens his room and it’s the first thing he sees. The phonograph, its once red wood muted from mold and dust, its horn nothing more than tarnished brass. Beside it still sits the row of boxes, and Takahiro coughs when he lifts one lid open, the dust flying up and straight down his lungs.

Immediately, a worried _You alright?_ reaches his ears, but he ignores it in favor of sifting through the records, packed tight but still in perfect alphabetical order. He slides the shellac disc out of its sleeve, blowing on its surface and eyeing the miniscule grooves reflecting the little light from outside.

He sets the disc on the turntable, clutches the crank and turns it, turns it, turns it, until the machine comes to life. He lifts the tonearm, drops the needle and waits until music echoes from its horn like a song travelling through time.

 _Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence_ plays. Takahiro closes his eyes. He always used to imagine a grand, domed theater, him sitting alone among rows and rows of seats as a spotlight shone on the stage where a pianist played. Now all he sees when he closes his eyes is himself, tiny and young and creeping out of his room just in time to watch his mother step out of their front door, dragging something large and heavy behind her.

Takahiro had called out then, but she didn’t stop, didn’t pause as she slid the door shut, loud enough to slam, loud enough to cause the clock in the hallway to jump, then fall to the floor with a terrifying crash, its hands twitching like the legs of a dying bug, ticking once, twice, before finally yielding.

 

 

-

 

 

After his mother left, all time ever did was slowly ruin what was left of his family. Grace stopped holding together his father’s limbs. His voice grew harsh and gravelly, charred by smoke and tar. His hair only remained greasy and matted up until he lost every single strand of it. His grandmother was forced to find work again, and without her, the house grew even darker.

The floors creak. Takahiro just barely stops himself from reflexively tensing at the sound. Somehow, the house still creaks the same way, just a little hollower, a little more threatening.

“You don’t have to be guilty.”

Another, softer sound rings out, and he looks back to see Issei leaning against the doorway, a disapproving frown on his face.

“You’re not sad he’s dead, and there’s no reason for you to feel guilty about it.” he repeats, exactly like he said it the first time, when Takahiro heard the news. Issei sighs heavily when he doesn’t respond, and walks over to him, grabs him by the shoulders, firm but careful.

“When you told me the story, I asked you what finally pushed your grandma to get you out of there.” Issei continues. His hands move from his shoulders to cup his neck, thumbs brushing over his jaw. “You remember what you said?”

Of course Takahiro remembers. Sometimes he wishes he didn’t, but all he needs to do for it all to come rushing back is brush through his hair to feel the scar at the top of his head, jagged, about as long as his index finger and perfectly matching the sharp edge of the table that still sits in the dining room.

“He threw me aside because I got between him and the fridge.” he murmurs, the phantom ache of it waking a throbbing in his crown. “I hit the table. Was bleeding all over the fucking floor but he didn’t even care.” 

He doesn’t remember much from then, just a lot of blurs and a lot of screaming, eyes blinking open on a hospital bed, his grandmother a pale silhouette hovering beside him, her hands shaking, her eyes alight with rage.

He _does_ remember this: being thirteen and standing on the doorway, his grandmother’s hand around his wrist, watching his father cough his lungs out on the couch with all its mildew and beer stains, a cigarette still squeezed between trembling fingers. He doesn’t know anymore what it was he waited for, why he even turned and spared a glance for a man who never bothered to do the same for him, but he knew he’d waited in vain. All he succeeded in doing was to give this man one last chance to hurt him.

“He should’ve rotted in prison for what he did.” Issei hisses, angry in a way he really had no right to be, considering he wasn’t there, had never even met Takahiro’s father. He strokes over where the scar is, the only other person who Takahiro allows to touch it.

Whether or not his father ever served time, Takahiro never knew. Maybe not. Takahiro thinks his grandmother might not have been able to afford pressing charges, too focused on just getting them _out_ of that house and on a train to Sendai, where her relatives helped her find a decent apartment for cheap. A studio-style with one bedroom and a tiny kitchen and it wasn’t much but it was warm and safe and it was the home Takahiro realized he never really had.

Besides, it’s not like it matters, in the end. Takahiro never heard from his father since then and now he’s dead and gone. Found face down in the living room by a nosy postman investigating the rancid scent that wafted from the open window. Died as he had lived and all that bullshit.

 _His wife left him years ago, but he has a son, doesn’t he? That’s him, isn’t it? Poor thing._ he heard the neighbors whisper, out in the haunted streets where they peeked to see who was parking into the driveway of the old farmhouse; _orphan_ they called him. Takahiro doesn’t get it. He’d been an orphan long before that blood clot ended his father’s life. If anything, it really took its fucking time.

He doesn’t even know he’s shaking until Issei wraps his arms around him. _Breathe, Taka, breathe._ he says, and Takahiro closes his eyes, tries to keep time with the steady expansion and compression of Issei’s chest against his, anchors himself to the sound of Issei’s humming alongside _Forbidden Colours_.

Outside, thunder rumbles.

 

 

-

 

 

The record stops and there’s nothing more than the needle scratching over air, the sound like a crackling fire with none of the comfort nor the warmth. Robotically, Takahiro begins to pack away the things still of value, things his father somehow didn’t sell in pursuit of his vices. Issei is always following behind, lugging and loading boxes into the trunk, the occasional dry commentary here and there.

In the end, there really isn’t much stuff left. Takahiro isn’t even surprised.

Issei has small eyes, and Takahiro knows he’s used this fact to his advantage a lot. He likes to observe people, just stare and catalogue all the little things they do, consciously or not. He never used to notice it either, but years of living together has already made him hyperaware of the weight of Issei’s stare.

He only gives a dull, flat look in return. He’s tired. It’s been a long drive and a longer day and he just wants to rest, to feel safe and to forget what never deserves to be remembered. He sighs, reaches up behind him for the seatbelt—

“I love you, Taka.”

The belt slides back into its slit with a _zzzzip_. He breathes, and for a few precious seconds there is the silence.

Issei doesn’t reach out. Doesn’t touch him. And Takahiro thinks he needs this too, just to listen to their breaths harmonizing in the car, a little shaky and a little choked up and a little heavy, but it reminds him he’s not alone— _he never was_ —and it lightens the load just a little bit.

“Love you too.”

Issei leans over, kisses his temple, and reaches across Takahiro’s shoulder to pull his seatbelt buckle and slide it over his torso.

 

 

-

 

 

The second he steps into their apartment, Takahiro sees the grand piano that takes up more than its fair share of space. He sees the couch just across from it and remembers lazy afternoons spent astride that very couch, watching Issei play. He remembers one rainy day when Mancini flowed from Issei’s fingers, to the piano, to the very air that stills around them. He remembers a Takahiro three years younger, his heart plump with love and happiness and a silver band on his finger instead of the gold one he wears today.

“If you hadn’t already asked me to marry you, I’d ask you to play at my wedding.” he’d said, grinning behind a pillow like the lovestruck fool he was— _is_.

Issei grinned then, fingers still seamless in their dance. “Who knows? We could have our best men push me up the aisle on a wheeled piano.”

Takahiro watches the scene from the translucent curtain of his memories. He thinks of the house in Ohtawara, with its two floors and numerous rooms that hold nothing but sadness. He remembers stepping past the doorway of that house at thirteen and promising to himself that someday he’ll find a home for himself and fill it with enough happiness to make up for the years of his life where he’d been deprived of it.

He sinks into Issei’s embrace when it comes, looks around at their apartment with its bright lights, its quirky, mismatched furniture, and walls lined with picture frames and smiles. _Welcome home_ they say.

“We’re home.” Takahiro responds.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank tookumade for heading this zine! There were so many amazing works by artists and writers alike. For fans of this ship you HAVE to check it out. It's wonderful.


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